The Mouth of Divine Intervention
by Angelfirenze
Summary: I'm the Devil," he said brokenly. "The Devil exists and he is me." "No," the -- his Father stated simply and Severus looked up in angry disbelief. "You've only just shown me as much!" PART ONE OF THREE


**The Mouth of Divine Intervention**  
_By Angelfirenze_

**Disclaimer:** J.K. Rowling, Alan Moore, and Kevin Smith own all, alas.

**Summary:** "I'm the Devil," he said brokenly. "The Devil exists and he is me."

"No," the -- his Father stated simply and Severus looked up in angry disbelief.

"You've only just shown me as much!"

**Timeline:** Pre-series, as shown within Deathly Hallows, precedes both movies, as well, though that's far less relevant.

**Notes:** Completely AU, obviously.

**Rating: FRM** for unsavory subject matter.

**Fandoms:** Harry Potter, _Dogma_, _Constantine_.

**Characters/Entities:** Severus Snape, Metatron; indirectly God, Lucifer, Jesus Christ, Mammon, John Constantine, Tobias and Eileen Snape.

Severus stumbled unseeingly up the hill that only seemed to become longer each time his foot struck ground. He wasn't getting there, he'd never...

Severus fell to the ground, panting, half-convinced he was drowning under the weight of the emotions besieging him and the tears that burned ceaselessly out of his eyes no matter how he tried to dispel them.

"Lily," he moaned hoarsely, piteously, bringing his scratched and bruised hands to his face as he began to sob in earnest now.

"She can't hear you, you're well aware." Severus started, his eyes immediately landing on...himself. Or what he should look like in twenty years if he hadn't wanted so fiercely to die in the here and now.

"And what good, really," he heard a deeper, infinitely more wry version of his own voice ask, sadness in every word. "Would killing yourself do now? You'll only go to Hell, but then I'd say you're already there, aren't you, my young one?"

Severus grasped at the steep summit of the hill, an untenable anger coming back to surge through him. "And what the fucking hell do you care, hm? Apparently, Future Me -- you've already said and done and..."

Severus petered off and looked around at the startlingly empty clearing. "Dumbledore is hardly the person to grant you anything he's yet to achieve himself, my son."

Severus' face whipped angrily back around to face this familiar stranger, "Will you _stop_ all that bloody 'my young' this and 'my son' that -- I'm no son of anyone anymore and, anyway..."

He couldn't bring himself to finish the conviction held no less deeply in his heart.

"I want you and -- furthermore -- God has always wanted and needed you, even moreso than I."

Severus laughed at this, cold, mocking and cruel. "God? Where was God when -- at any point in my disgusting existence at all, hm? Where was the mighty shepherd when _this_ little lamb became so deeply astray -- fell into a bog pit and sank into the muck -- where was the _Dear Heavenly Father_, then? Come to think of it, where could Heaven possibly be? You've said I'm already in Hell, after all. You can only go up or down and it's not like the stop in the middle was a right laugh, either..."

Severus' voice was leaving him again and he stared at the stranger with his eyes and nose, his hair. The man said nothing, never trying to hurry Severus to any sort of conclusion or even mock his slowness on the uptake.

"I don't understand what's happening."

The older lookalike gazed sadly down at him then, "Why should anyone expect you to? You're only a man right now, and it's not time. Your lessons learnt will show themselves in due time and you must remember to be patient and let them."

Severus bit back another acerbic reply and the older, shinier him held out a hand. Severus took it and gasped. It was only then that he realized the stranger was standing on mid-air, wandlessly.

He tried to snatch his hand back, "You're the Dark Lord in disguise, finding a way to shape-shift into my appearance -- you're here to trick, then punish me!"

The stranger shook his head, "I'm afraid you're very mistaken, Severus," he mercifully forsook those terms of endearment Dumbledore would have irreverently plowed onward with. "But, then again, no one's ever accused you of never having made one. A rather long string of them for a while now has just cost you the life of the one person you so selfishly hold dear that you, right this moment, feel as though half your soul were cleaved out on the butcher block."

Severus was unabashedly mesmerized now and Metatron surprised him further by smiling at him. "Lucifer's certainly been given his way with you, hasn't he? I've already thanked the Heavenly Father time and again that you were never exposed to Mammon. _That_ would have killed any hope of a future you'd have after this."

"What the devil are you talking about? There's no such thing as God," Snape spat out, glaring malevolently at the sky surrounding them as if just to prove the point.

"And what would you know? Your memory was altered the moment you were born." And for the first time, the stranger looked angry. It was none of Severus' father's fury reminiscent of lighting a blowtorch but rather the simmering of a steaming pot. The stranger set his mouth and leaned into Severus' face. Severus started backward but then the stranger's hands were on his shoulders and those eyes were like long, terrible, beautiful tunnels dragging him in.

Scenes before his birth rushed into his mind, his mother a witch in Slytherin -- fleeting moments of her life with his father before he came...her magic twisting and putrefying in her unhappiness, his father's eyes glowing inhumanly before his entire body being reduced to ash and sludge at the feet of an unknown man.

_Demon_ something whispered inside him and Severus recoiled in horror. But the stranger's voice came back now, whispering comfortingly, _Watch_. The demon within Tobias Snape had destroyed his mother's magic, but not her body, a life-giving vessel. The child within flickered in his consciousness, a faint green glow suffusing the womb. Severus attempted to recoil once more but the stranger and his comfort tightened his grip on Severus's shoulder and his fear was gone again.

The stranger stood over his mother's sleeping, shivering form, his face infinitely sad and slightly bitter. He kissed each of his palms and placed both hands on the womb, that same warm, gentle light turning a muted pale green that seemed inlaid with pearl. The child's heart began to flicker and beat. Severus gasped within. _I was dead before I was born..._ and the stranger stepped back from his mother's bed, lifting her thin sheet before considering for a moment and snapping his fingers to replace it with a thick roll of embroidered cloth. He turned and flipped his hand again and a small, comfortably decorated crib appeared where none had been before.

"He will have to struggle against Mammon's influence, his _presence_. You will have to help him, Eileen. Should you not..." and for the first time the stranger's face became infused with dark light and his voice deepened bombastically. "You will hold the world's blood in your hands, spilled by his commanders in their own interests and your son will only be able to say the same."

The stranger...his _father_ looked back from Severus again who was staring down at his own hands in abject horror.

"I'm the Devil," he said brokenly. "The Devil exists and he is me."

"No," the -- his Father stated simply and Severus looked up in angry disbelief.

"You've only just shown me as much!"

His father shook his head, at once understanding and impatient, "I showed you the path your life as taken thus far. I've shown you why, in your ignorance and your mother's failure to shield you, your darker impulses ran roughshod over you. I will _tell_ you that Albus Dumbledore has only his interpretation of the Greater Good in mind when he intends to use you. It will never be for the good of those he intends to protect doing so, despite what inclines himself to believe. His demons, unlike yours, were man-and-self-made and only he can conquer them. You must not allow him to tempt you into doing his job for him, nor allow him to fool you into believing that his hand is all that stays your retreat back to Voldemort's side. It is true that you will have to cross him but _you_, Severus Snape, _not_ Albus Dumbledore, will be the only way you arrive at the other side."

Father frowned again, "You will never forget about Lily, nor do you deserve to in any and all things that means. She will haunt you, you will chase her, as shall the specters of all those whom you allowed harm to come to. But," as Severus had fallen to his knees once more. "You will never be alone and you will be better."

Father placed his hand on Severus' forehead now and he felt something viscous sliding off as though it had been suffocating him. "You will see all that was blinded to you before. If not for that Albus Dumbledore would have you trailing along after daintly parsed out secrets. Voldemort isn't the only one who keeps his _servants_ at arm's length. Be strong, my son. Try what might anyone tell you, but Jesus was frightened, as well. He was younger than you are, yes, but fear never leaves those who are forced to endure. Even when Lucifer's officers are at your back, remember that only a few steps further lays God's embrace. And mine."

With that, Father disappeared, and Severus stared around. "But I don't even know your name!"

"But of course you do," a cold voice interrupts and Severus startles again, this time looking up into the cold, judgmental eyes of Albus Dumbledore. Snape recoiled from the discomforting hands he'd almost touched.

"Don't kill me!"

"That was not my intention."

END


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